14 Responses to “[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Family Computing”

“After the portrait, they had to take little Jimmy to the Emergency Room to mend his crushed legs.”

During Thanksgiving, I typically like to eat the turkey (naturally), as well as the mashed potatoes and cranberries. As for games, sadly, I am typically with my aunt and uncle for festivities, so I generally do not have access to gaming. Usually whatever I quickly grab for the Game Boy the day prior.

That family picture looks amusingly like it belongs on the Awkward Family Photos blog… I’m not sure what’s stranger: the way the older boy’s legs don’t seem to fit his body, the younger boy’s semi-smile, the “yikes someone’s giving me a wedgie up to my ears!” expression on the father’s face.

Anyway, my favorite food is actually mixing the leftover turkey, gravy, stuffing, and putting it on a dinner roll for a cold snack/lunch *after* Thanksgiving. My cousins unfortunately haven’t had any game machines since their Atari 2600, and since I rarely see them, it’d be considered profoundly rude if I brought a handheld system. (This year I believe I’m staying home, though, so it’s moot. Not sure what I’ll play, if anything; I might try to learn how to properly use MESS.)

In 1983 I really wanted a computer, but our family didn’t have a lot of money at the time. My father felt sorry for me and bought me a subscription to Family Computing instead. It turned out that the magazine subscription, which I read cover to cover the day it arrived, was just as valuable a gift. I absorbed everything in that magazine, and because I didn’t have a computer, I would spend hours tracing through the BASIC listings IN MY HEAD (or sometimes with a pad next to me, as I couldn’t remember more than about 5-6 variables at a time). I would also plot low-res graphics out on graph paper so I could see what the graphical programs were drawing. It was like a logical puzzle.

My dad was secretly saving up for a computer, and in December 1984 surprised the family with an AT&T PC 6300, which he was able to get at a discount because he worked at AT&T at the time. I used that computer just as long as I read Family Computing, both until roughly 1989.

I’m a vegetarian, so Thanksgiving tends to be less-than-thrilling for me. I rarely get a true main course, and stick to a variety of sides. Usually there will be some kind of soup or salad that will appeal, but it varies from year to year.

As for games, the only game I really have any memory of associating with Thanksgiving is “Heroes of Might and Magic II,” which my brother and I played all throughout one Thanksgiving weekend, subsisting on leftovers. Good times.